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Bad English (not the band) and Poor Editing in the News.

We all know American news media outlets have hit all time lows not only in terms of bias and the trash stories they report on but also in terms of poor spelling, bad grammar and lack of editorial review. Every day I see errors that would have had me kicked off my high school newspaper staff but would never have made it past the editor's proof read. I would never claim to never make writing errors but I don't do it for a living. So post here any screw ups that catch your eye. Some are funny, some are just bad.

This one comes courtesy of the Huffington Post (I honestly think HP is written by first graders) and was in today's story on actor Ron Jeremy's hospitalization.

"He was also reportedly recruited last year to help catch Luka Magnotta, the alleged porn-star-gone-Canadian cannibal."

So, was he a cannibal porn star who turned Canadian? Or maybe a porn star turned cannibal who only eats Canadians (do Americans not taste good)?

See it a lot, but more on online versions of news organisations. I think with that there's a lot of pressure to come up with fresh content so they're not checking the articles as closely. A case of quantity over quality perhaps.

In the UK we have a national paper called The Guardian which is famously reffered to as The Grauniad such was it's reputation for typographical errors. A bit undeserved as it goes back to the old days of printing - long before it was all computerised.

About 15 years ago the local paper published a full-page ad for JC Penny. They were advertising a big sale for "Hunt Club" clothing but there was a typo.

Cutting to the chase, the "H" and the "C" are a few characters apart of a qwerty keyboard. It had to have been deliberate.

Hans, that tickled my funny bone. I think the top brass needs to treat there low wage underlings with courtesy and respect. In your example the C and H are a long way apart on the keyboard.

That said I find proof reading has become a lost practice. Grammar! Hah! I don't write professionally and it's been quite a while since I've been in school. There's a lot of rules I no longer remember. When my boys were in grade school they would try to tell me it didn't matter how they wrote, the teach could read and understand it. I kept telling them someday they would not be in school and that very few things are more important then successful communication.

Ah the beauty of owning a Mac, it will autocorrect everything I type. (and I need it too)

I wind up on the flip side of that feature a lot! I use a lot of terms at work that aren't in the Mac dictionary. So it very helpfully "fixes" things it doesn't think are words and I have to go back and un-fix them to say what I needed to say!